Lotte to launch mobile payment system this month

By Park Jin-hai

Shin Dong-bin Lotte Group Chairman

Lotte Group said Monday it has completed its L-Pay mobile payment system and will start operating the service this month.

This has been regarded as the key to the group’s omni-channel shopping system that ties together all means of purchasing, such as on- and off-l

i

ne venues and mobile devices.

The L-Pay enables customers to use L Point credit card points as well as Lotte credit card and all other credit cards with ease, once they download an application on their smart phones.

“To extend our business area, we have launched the innovation lab and we will continue to find new business opportunities. In the finance sector, we are diversifying our business portfolio from the credit card business to fintech,” said Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin at a recent Asian Business Counsel forum.

“We plan to start commercial services this month,” he added.

As the retail mogul is about to make inroads into the mobile payment system, based on its off-line retail networks, industry watchers expect competition in the mobile payment market to become fiercer.

Local conglomerates including Samsung and Shinsegae, as well as Alibaba have all established their own mobile payment systems.

“Before the Chuseok holiday, Lotte’s affiliates will start using the system on a trial run. Afterwards, the application will further expand its service to include other credit cards,” said a Lotte spokesman.

Shin has put great emphasis on the omni-channel shopping system and mobile payment technology to back it, seeing them as a new growth engine for the company.

In March last year, he inaugurated an e-commerce 2.0 project team tasked with developing strategies to enable the omni-channel service. In February this year, he also launched an innovation lab to develop the technologies needed for the payment system, such as a smartphone communication technology that automatically pops up the store’s discount coupons on smartphones when customers walk within a certain radius of the store and big data system.

In April, Lotte also renamed its point system L Point and unified its on-line and off-line Lotte members, as preparation for the L-Pay system.

“L-Pay is an important infrastructure for the omni-channel stores. With the L-Pay’s launching we expect our omni-channel shopping business to pick up speed,” the spokesperson said.

The omni-channel shopping system is a global trend.

Global retail giant Amazon combined online and offline shopping, blurring the boundaries between physical stores and online malls. Thanks to the omni-channel shopping system customers can pick up goods at shops close to their location after placing orders online.

During a meeting with executives in November, Shin said, “If Lotte makes the omni-channel shopping system a success, we will have competitiveness on a par with global retail giant Amazon.”